Psychology Assignment Reports

Running head: PSYCHOLOGY ASSIGNMENT 1
Capstone Seminar
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation

PSYCHOLOGY ASSIGNMENT 2
Background
Prayer is the act of creating a rapport with a given object of worship via a form of
communication. Many believers of different religions believe in a Supreme Being ‘God’, who they pray
and worship. In these religions, prayer is an important tool to communicate and cast one's fears and
anxieties to God. In the bible, Philippians 4:6-7, records that, ‘Cast all your anxiety on him because he
cares for you’. This is a pledge to express and tell all the anxieties and burdens of life that one faces in life
to God. This is normally done through prayer. This is a therapy to many believers when they attend places
of worship to pray and express their fears to God. Anxiety is defined as the feeling of worry or strong fear
that interferes with one’s normal activities. Due to the current struggles of life, fear of calamities such as
COVID-19, fear to fail exams, accidents, among others, every human being is bound to be anxious at one
point or another. This has resulted in depression in many people especially young people because of the
lack of avenues to speak out and vent their worries of life. According to Ellison, et.al (2014), prayer
was found to have a negative relationship with systems of anxiety-related disorders in
individuals with a strong attachment to God. However, a positive relationship was found in
individuals who had an insecure attachment to God.
Correlation study
Correlation is the measure of association that exists between variables. This is mainly done for
quantitative variables and measured between two variables (Tabachnick, Fidell & Ullman,2007). This
measure is important in deriving the strength and direction of the relationship between variables. The
degree of this association is determined by the correlation coefficient value (r) which ranges between -1
to +1. Negative values of r denote negative relationships while positive value denotes positive
associations (Steel & Torrie,2012). Variables are said to be negatively associated when one variable
decreases with an increase in the next variable and vice versa. Positive associations occur when one
variable increases with an increase with the next variable and vice versa. A value of 0 implies that the

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involved variables are not related. It is also important to note that the strength of the relationship is
derived from r values that close to 1.According to Cohen (2013), r -values between +/-0.1 to +/-0.29
represent weak relationship-values between +/-0.3 to+/-4.9 represent moderate relationship while r=+/-0.5
to +/-1represent strong relationship.
The research question in the study is;
“Is there a relationship between prayer and anxiety? Does pray seem to be associated with people
who show low levels of anxiety?”
Hypothesis:
Null hypothesis (Ho); Frequency of prayer does not affect anxiety levels
The alternative hypothesis (Ha): Frequent prayer leads to less anxiety.
To study the above hypothesis, the independent variable was taken as the frequency of prayer
while the level of anxiety is the dependent variable.
Sampling design
The study involved a sample size of 10 respondents who were randomly sampled from
the volunteers who were willing to be included in the study. Questionnaires were used to collect
information from the subjects. Before the administration of the questionnaires, the respondents
were educated on the purpose of the experiment. They were then allowed to sign a consent in
agreement with continuing with the experiment. The independent variable (frequency of prayer)
was derived from enquiring of how often each respondent prayed from Monday through Sunday.
The Beck Anxiety Instrument was used to determine the anxiety score ( Beck, Epstein, Brown &
Steer,1988).

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Results and Discussion
Table 1: Data Summary
Respondent Prayer Frequency (X) Anxiety Score (Y)
1 4 25
2 5 38
3 3 34
4 14 23
5 1 31
6 10 21
7 6 33
8 15 19
9 2 29
10 5 42
Using a correlation calculator or excel the coefficient of correlation r= -
0.6404,p=.04.This implies that there exists a strong negative correlation between anxiety scores
and prayer frequency (King'oriah, 2012). This suggests that the anxiety scores decrease with an
increase in prayer frequency and vice versa.
A visual display of the table1 can be shown using a scatter plot. The points are found to cluster
from left to right with a negative slope. This implies that there exists a negative relationship.
Most points are also clustered along the line of best fit showing a strong association. The
regression equation is y=-0.986x+35.909;Anxiety score=-0.986Prayer Frequency+35.909.The
R-Squared value was found to be 0.41. This implies that 41% of the anxiety model can be
explained by the frequency of prayers. The remaining 59% is attributable to other factors that are
absent from the model. Studies reveal that more than 70 per cent of the model should be
explained by the independent variables for it to be sufficient.

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0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
45
f(x) = − 0.986013986013986 x + 35.9090909090909
R² = 0.410112011881923
Anxiety Score versus Prayer Frequency
Prayer Frequency (X)
Anxiety Score (Y)
Figure 1: Scatter Plot
The reliability of the instruments of the scale was tested using Cronbach’s alpha value in
SPSS software. This measures the internal consistency of the items. The Cronbach alpha value of
0.792 resulted. Since the alpha value is greater than 0.7, we conclude that the data is reliable.
The anxiety levels in most respondents were found to be moderate and potentially high.
The highest score was found to be 42 while the lowest score was 19. The prayer frequency, on
the other hand, was between 1 and 15 times per week. As realized from previous studies. The
frequency of prayer was found to be negatively associated with anxiety levels. (r=-.64)
Therefore, it can be concluded that prayers can reduce anxiety levels. The p-value <.05 hence the
results is statistically significant at 5% and 10% levels of significance.However,at 1%,level of
significance, this study is not statistically significant.
In this case, the null hypothesis is rejected at alpha=.05. This, therefore, implies that the
alternative hypothesis which argues that frequent prayers lead to less anxiety is indeed true.

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Limitation of study
The experiment was successful but still had a few shortcomings that can be corrected in
the future. The sample size used is small (n<30) (Johnson & Bhattacharyya,2019), hence cannot
be dependent upon for an effective conclusion on the topic. The study variables also are
subjective hence difficult to correct accurate data from them. For instance, the number of times
one prays in a week in relative. One person may pray for 2 minutes and another person may pray
for two hours. This will pose challenges when concluding whether prayer is effective. Also, our
personalities and how we are created is different from one person to another. One person or
gender may tend to be more anxious and prone to stress more likely than the other. Therefore,
clearways need to be thought-out to ensure the study is accurate and can be replicated by
difference researchers to bring similar results. Apart from prayer, other factors can reduce
anxiety and stress for people. These include exercise, laughing, spending time with family and
friends, among others. This differs from one person to another and will affect their levels of
anxiety. The r-square value of the model is also less than 0.7. Use of bigger sample size can be a
remedy to this problem.
Future Studies
This similar study, therefore, can be replicated using a large sample and results compared
to find out if the results are similar. Future studies also can be done on different religions such as
Islam, Christianity, and Hinduism to find out if the anxiety levels in each religion were similar.
The study needs also to be replicated by different researchers in different parts of the word to
find out the behaviours and response of different regions and races to the variables. This can be
done using large sample sizes that are more representative of the population. It is also important
to study other factors that affect anxiety apart from the frequency of prayers. Using factor

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analysis and principal components, it therefore possible to segregate the factors that are most
important in the determination of anxiety scores. Using the factor loadings, the researchers will,
therefore, be able to investigate how much these factors affect the anxiety scores.

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References
Beck, A.T., Epstein, N., Brown, G., & Steer, R.A. (1988). An inventory for measuring clinical
anxiety:Psychometric properties. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 56,
893-897.
Bruce, F. F. (2011). Philippians (Understanding the Bible Commentary Series). Baker Books.
Cohen, J. (2013). Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences. Academic press.
Cohen, J., Cohen, P., West, S. G., & Aiken, L. S. (2013). Applied multiple
regression/correlation analysis for the behavioral sciences. Routledge.
Ellison, C. G., Bradshaw, M., Flannelly, K. J., & Galek, K. C. (2014). Prayer, attachment to God,
and symptoms of anxiety-related disorders among US adults. Sociology of Religion,
75(2), 208-233.
Gravetter, F. J., & Wallnau, L. B. (2000). Statistics for the behavioral sciences (5th
edn).Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
Johnson, R. A., & Bhattacharyya, G. K. (2019). Statistics: principles and methods. John Wiley &
Sons.
King'oriah, G. K. ( 2012) "Fundamentals of applied statistics." Nairobi: The Jomo Kenyatta
Foundation.
Steel, R., & Torrie, J. (2012). Principles and procedures of statistics: a Biometrical approach
MCGraw-Hill Book Company Toronto. Redvet, 13(6), 481.

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Tabachnick, B. G., Fidell, L. S., & Ullman, J. B. (2007). Using multivariate statistics (Vol. 5).
Boston, MA: Pearson.